1. Field of the Invention
The embodiments of the invention relate generally to methods and devices for monitoring and analyzing electrical energy consumption, consumer energy usage, identifying devices that are consuming electrical energy, determining line impedance, and measuring and analyzing voltage changes within a building.
2. Background Information
Increasing concerns about global climate change create urgency to move toward systems that are able to provide energy savings advantages. Employing a Smart Grid, an intelligent energy generation, transmission, and distribution system, can provide energy savings. The potential of the Smart Grid lies in its integration and usage of Information Computing Technology (ICT) to deliver greater energy efficiency than is available with the current electrical grid. Meeting energy optimization challenge, in part, involves imbuing the current infrastructure with improved measuring, monitoring, inference, control, actuation, and manageability at many levels of the grid, including at the very edges of the infrastructure where there are an ever-increasing number of end-user devices and appliances. Each of these smart venues may potentially provide energy savings, not only by decreasing the demand of energy during peak load times on a multiuser electrical grid, but also by using less energy overall.